This is where I share the wisdom that a granny, as an elder of the tribe, accumulates in her journey through life. The reach of my mind is wide, and sometimes even a little deep. Sometimes, like Whitman, I contradict myself. Sometimes I wax eloquent. Sometimes I fall on my face. Why not do it in public?

Monday, April 02, 2007

In A Nutshell LV

OK, you know what we're doing here. And today, we are down to:.

55. My teachers generally described me as this kind of student:

Bright and talkative. Years later, when I was working helping people change careers, part of the process was to assess their motivated skills. Motivated skills are the ones that you will use even when you aren't supposed to. The things, I used to say to them, that you used to get in trouble for in school.

Because what I used to get in trouble for in school was hearing what the teacher said and knowing how another student was hearing it differently and knowing how to phrase it so the other student could understand. And then explaining it that way. Oddly enough, very few teachers appreciate a child as a team teacher!

Things would be going just fine, the teacher would say something, a student near me would say, in honest confusion, "What did she say?" or, "What does she want us to do?" and I would answer. Too often the other kid would say, "Well, why didn't she just say that?" And I would be in trouble, yet again. One teacher even told me that when I got a paycheck I could teach her class for her.

Almost every question that a teacher asked, up would go my hand. I was in high school chemistry before I hit a class where I didn't almost always know the answer. I've only taken two classes in my life, chemistry and college physics, where I wasn't the first one done with the test. Well, I did have an anthropology class at Berkeley that I could never finish the test -- but no one else ever did, either. And, the professor told me that I got more of it finished than anyone else ever had. He designed his tests that way.

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Liberal Identity

My Liberal Identity:

You are a Social Justice Crusader, also known as a rights activist. You believe in equality, fairness, and preventing neo-Confederate conservative troglodytes from rolling back fifty years of civil rights gains.